Film Trucks are fairly new on the scene in terms of hardware manufacturers, but in the short time the company has been around they have made a big splash. The company is largely the brainchild of French skate legend Jeremie Daclin, and in the heavily competitive industry of skateboard trucks, you would think a truck company that exists far away from the central hub of California would suffer, but Film have been doing really well for themselves.
France has always quietly bubbled away as a hot-spot for sick alternative skate companies, from the likes of Cliche, to the newer kids on the block like Rave. The output from our friends across the English Channel has a mass appeal that I feel transcends any one style of skater – and seeing their home grown talent tackle the varied and beautiful terrain of French towns and cities is always a joy to watch.
Not only do Film boast a massive, awesome team of skaters, mostly hailing from the criminally overlooked European skate scene, but it also helps immensely that they make a great product. This might be sacrilege to Indy lifers, but Film’s trucks are, in my opinion, fantastic, and I’ve been having a blast skating them after sticking with Indy’s for nigh on 15 years. They are distributed in the UK by Nick Zorlac’s Power Distribution, so there’s some rad overlap with brands like Death, Blast Skates and Heroin – and similarly to these brands the quality of their products is great.
It’s no surprise then, that Film have seen fit to bring their sizeable team of Euro shredders together for their first full length video: Premier Amour. Released in the closing days of 2020, it’s clear that a global pandemic hasn’t slowed down the gaellic hardware company one bit. Setting the tone a country mile from their American competitors, the video really leans into the company’s French origin, with plenty of artsy editing effects and movie clips interspersed amongst the skateboarding, and some left field music choices.
This strong separation of identity goes one step further with the video’s opening section: from Blast Skates wonder kid and one of my personal favourite pro skaters, Ben Koppl. Koppl has had a hell of a year, dropping plenty of bizarre transition footage and being the first skater on the Blast Skates team to cop a pro model.
He caps off an amazing 2020 with a part full of his signature skateboarding magic, with plenty of crazy roll in variations, inventive, parkour inspired street moves, and closing things off with a Noseblunt on a parking curb which he rags upward into a wallride. Ben’s part got me super hyped for what was to follow, and I definitely came away with a litany of new tricks I wanted to learn – a common occurrence any time I watch footage of this dude.
Koppl opens the floodgates to a huge montage style video where the action bounces between several Film team members in rapid succession: highlights include Theo Moga, with a particularly snazzy Frontside Boardslide to Wallride, and Ben Koppl’s Blast Skates teammate Nassir Roumou (another personal favourite skater of mine at the minute) who pops up to shred Bay 66’s mini ramp, as well as drop some bangers at Stockwell near the end of the video.
In the middle of this chaotic video, a semi-full part appears from a guy called Truman Burbank, and I am pretty sure that can’t be his real name. Either way, he is introduced with the perfect accompaniment of a clip from The Truman Show, with Jim Carrey’s Truman Burbank reciting the film’s iconic catchphrase: “Good morning! And if I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening and good night.”
This clip leads into an utterly insane selection of street moves which kind of rewrites the social rules around Darkslides and “circus” style tricks. Burbank is clearly having a lot of fun with his skating here and pulls out some lesser seen moves that would make Rodney Mullen double take.
He brings out some rad powerslide variations early on in his part, including some inventive use of a beer crate. He even ropes in a homie for a team effort curling move, as his buddy brushes the concrete in front of the beer crate, and Burbank stalls the crate and slides down the road into a ledge combo directly after! My personal favourite trick of this section, however, is a mental Hang Ten Nollie Hardflip, which is utterly mind blowing.
Following Burbank’s part, the video chugs on at top speed through the rest of it’s 25 minute run time, cycling through more montage sections as everyone remotely related to Film throws down at least one banger each.
British hammer machine Joe Hinson drops some particularly mean footage in the brief 45-ish seconds he is on screen, with a 360 flip down the familiar Terribleco haunt “Cov Macba” aka The Herbert, as well as a long ass 5050 down a double kinked handrail which wouldn’t look out of place in the latest Deathwish video.
Dirk Broerson directly follows Hinson, with some really funky ledge moves that caused a raised eyebrow. His use of no complies into and out of ledge tricks is super rad, and I particularly enjoyed his No Comply 180 to a super tweaked Hurricane grind. He also throws a Beanplant down a hefty stair set and I’m always a fan of that trick being done on the street.
The video comes to a close with a mega part from Victor Cascarigny. After the very quick snippets of radness from each Film family member, Cascarigny’s part feels like an epic bookend to the preceding 20 minutes. Coming in hot with a ton of French footage, Victor tackles cobbled back alleys, modern European architecture and villa ledges and walls with confidence and tricky dexterity.
This closing part consists of almost 5 minutes worth of cruising, flowing lines, mach ten flip tricks down gaps, and the occasional quirky move to keep things fresh and fun. Early on, he Tollies off of a bright orange van to commence a line, and near the end of his part he pulls out a crazy trick where he rocks the top step of a stair set and immediately ollies up onto a backside wallride down the stairs (side note: this is the second time I have seen someone hit a trick on stairs this way in the past fortnight, and I am certain this is going to be a 2021 trend for stair shredders).
Two other tricks pop up near the end of Victor’s part that stood out in my mind. The first is at a well skated brick volcano that has appeared in many skate videos over the years. Cascarigny chucks a 360 flip right over the thing and bombs off like it’s nothing, keeping his run going out of the camera’s view like he’s playing Skate 3. The other trick is a boosted Indy to 1 foot/Ollie North over a paved pyramid obstacle – a lesser seen maneuver that wouldn’t look out of place in an 80’s Bones Brigade video, but done with a huge amount of modern flair to make it timeless.
And that’s the video – a really sick 25 minutes that will no doubt introduce you to some European shredders you will absolutely love. My one complaint is that with a team this huge, it would’ve been good to give focus to a few more of the team who barely get any time to shine.
My British bias is showing, but I’ve been dying to see new full parts from both Nassir and Hinson for a while now, and unfortunately Premier Amour barely breezes on the itch, let alone scratches it. However, I respect the decision to give pretty much every Film team member a place in the spotlight – it’s most certainly a show of force and in terms of team size it proves they can go toe to toe with competitors like Independent or Royal easily.
Outside of Indy or Krux, I don’t think many truck companies go in on team videos, so for Film to put out a video like this is a real commendable effort. I was super stoked to see Jeremie Daclin use such a strong visual identity in the video: going so heavily into the “Film” theme makes this video, and the brand itself, stand out in a really cool way.
Similarly, the hugely varied team also got me stoked – I didn’t really know much about the company prior to this video apart from who distributed the trucks, and that Ben Koppl was on the team. Seeing the full breadth of talent on the team definitely made me more of a fan, and my earlier complaint about this video being quantity over quality probably comes from wanting to see more of the many particularly rad skaters who got me stoked on this company.
Those who have the most footage in Premier Amour absolutely smash it – Ben Koppl always rules, Truman Burbank (if that is his real name) might have just become one of my favourite street skaters, and Victor Cascarigny’s non-stop, video closing, street assault is a great end to this first full length from one of Europe’s best new companies. Get over to YouTube and dive head first into this video as soon as you can!
The Terrible Company 